Love in 'X, Y, Zee' Is Alphabet Soup

By Emerson Batdorff

Never before in the history of movie-going has a person had so wide a choice.

A few weeks ago a moviegoer could have seen "Bloody Sunday,” in which there was a girl fighting to wrest her boyfriend from his boyfriend.

If he goes now he may see "XQY and Zee," in which the tables are turned, to wit: he can watch a psuedeo lesbian seduce a latente lesbian to wrest the latter from the former's husband.

IT'S ALL pretty complicated, as you can tell. “X, Y and Zee" goes along fairly well for a while on the performances of Michael Caine as a tomcat and Susannah York as a beautiful interloper into his life.

She interlopes one night at a party. Their eyes meet and fish-hook across a crowded room. The tomcat is married to a true-blue vixen played in braying tones by Elizabeth Taylor.

This all takes place in kinky old London which seems to be a latter-day Sodom or Gomorrah if you are to believe movies at all.

The peculiar relationship between the husband and wife is, on his part, either a combination of love and hate or a bit of masochism. Anyhow, he sticks with her, either in spite of their fights or because of them.

She's so loud that people suggest she should open a fish store. Miss Taylor is indeed loud and fairly unmodulated.

CAINE KEEPS planning on leaving but he keeps going back. It is obvious that here the movie is trying to display insight but not much emerges because of all the hollering.

Finally the wife goes to the girlfriend and makes herself totally obnoxious and finally tells the girl, "He likes women who are a mess; that's why he's still with me."

Indeed, Miss Taylor has gone gaudy for the role and almost wears straw in her hair. Besides, she has got pleasingly plump, which make for an oddity when she remarks of the svelt Miss York, "that fat pig."

One could like the movie better if in it there was someone who was likable.

'X, Y and Zee'

Directed by Brian G. Hutton, original screenplay bl Edna O'Brien, produced by Jay Kanter and Alan Ladd Jr. Columbia. Adults.

Zee Robert Stella Gladys

Gordon Rita Gavin

Elisabeth Taylor

Michael Caine Susannah York Margaret Leighton

John Standing Mary Larkin Michael Cashman

The role Caine plays finds him taking this girl and then that to bed, and baiting his wife into furies. Not a man to be emulated, perhaps. Miss Taylor's role is outright fishwivery and you can't get around to liking her.

Miss York almost seems to be making the likability grade; in fact, all we can hold against her is that she is actively engaged in stealing another woman's husband with never a pang, apparently. Not quite sporting, although not unknown either.